


Some Measure of Peace

by Ben_Solo_Good_Boy_Sweater_Emporium



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Canon, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), One Shot, Romantic Soulmates, Slow Romance, TROS is Terrible, Talking, The Force Ships It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:55:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23395870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ben_Solo_Good_Boy_Sweater_Emporium/pseuds/Ben_Solo_Good_Boy_Sweater_Emporium
Summary: “I’m tired of fighting you,” she whispers.“I don’t want to fight you, either,” he answers, shaking his head in the tightly controlled way he does everything. It’s so familiar she aches.She doesn’t care how he came to be here. She doesn’t care that Finn and Poe and all the rest are waiting for her back on shore. She approaches him slowly.“Truce?” she offers.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 20
Kudos: 117





	Some Measure of Peace

**Author's Note:**

> I really, really hated TROS. The scene inside the Death Star was the one I was most looking forward to when I saw the trailer. I hoped it would play out more like this than the way it actually did.
> 
> Canon-compliant through TLJ, then...sigh.

The air tastes of salt. Filmy grey coats every surface Rey can see. The floor is crusted with it. Crystals splinter under the soles of her boots as she walks. Her steps are unsteady.

It’s cold in these rooms—what’s left of them. Walls open to the sky and the vicious wind off the sea tears through. The sound reminds her of storms on Jakku, days and nights when the gale would never stop howling until you thought you’d go mad from it. At times like those, Rey would curl up into as tight a ball as she could manage, burrow down into the darkest corner she could find, and beg the universe for quiet, for some measure of peace. She finds herself remembering those storms a lot lately.

She is so unhappy. She tries not to think too much about it. She feels a duty to help the Resistance, to be whatever it is they need her to be. But they don’t know what they need her to be. Their expectations are grandiose and ill-defined. She hates the looks in their eyes, simultaneously hopeful and disappointed. Rey is the miracle Jedi who hasn’t helped them win. She never knows what it is she’s supposed to be doing, only that somehow, she isn’t doing it.

There are times she wants to scream at them, to shake them and make them understand that she is not their savior. That she has no idea what her function is in their grand cause. She has no cunning plan to end the war. She is not shiningly good.

She is certain she is not a Jedi for many reasons, most profoundly because the Jedi did not believe in wanting. Rey wants. She wants deeply. If Poe or Finn or anyone else knew the things she dreams about, the things she longs for in the deepest recesses of her mind…well, she finds it hard to imagine the Resistance keeping her around. When bitterness flares, she thinks that might be a good reason to tell them.

The dark energy of this place is overwhelming. The walls are saturated with the poison of all the evil done here. Rey feels unbalanced, agitated. Her saber is ignited, raised against any danger. As she steps over debris and crosses one threshold after another, she senses that she is moving toward something. The center of the whirlwind. The black core of the dead star.

She skirts a treacherous opening in the metal floor, passing through the final doorway. Her heart slams to a stop in her chest. _Ben_. He’s just standing, staring at her, as if it’s perfectly normal for him to be here. He is waiting for her to arrive, as though they planned to meet. She hasn’t seen him in months. Not since that day on Crait, when he looked up at her with eyes so broken she wanted to sob, even as she closed the hatch of the _Falcon_ in his face and silently swore to herself that she would never open her heart to anyone again.

The miasma of darkness churning around them is so strong she didn’t sense him as she made her way in. The bond between them has been dormant all this time. She suspects both of them have shied away from it, like a deep bruise one avoids touching.

He looks exhausted. Ruling the galaxy is a punishing undertaking. _He never intended to do it alone_ , a voice deep inside rebukes her. Rey feels a pull, a desire to go to him, soothe him. She’s been feeling it for so long, and battling it every second since. Sometimes she can’t think why.

“Ben,” she says. The wind steals the sound away.

“I’m Ben again?” He sounds as drained as he looks.

“You were always Ben. To me, anyway.”

His eyes never leave hers. There are deep shadows under them. He’s draped in black, as always. The fabric of his cloak snaps around him in the strong drafts.

“To you,” he says gently.

The tone of his voice, so sad and hollow, drowns what little enmity she is holding onto. She switches her saber off, dropping it limply to the floor.

“I’m tired of fighting you,” she whispers.

“I don’t want to fight you, either,” he answers, shaking his head in the tightly controlled way he does everything. It’s so familiar she aches.

She doesn’t care how he came to be here. She doesn’t care that Finn and Poe and all the rest are waiting for her back on shore. She approaches him slowly.

“Truce?” she offers. _Please_.

“Truce?” he repeats, his surprise evident.

“Just for a few minutes?” she begs, inching closer. Ben shows no sign of distrusting her intentions. If anything, his face is transformed. His eyes are shining.

Rey edges near enough to touch him. They are teetering on the brink of something. Ben is rigid, willing himself to be still. Maybe he’s afraid she’ll change her mind. His gloved hands are balled into tight fists. She reaches out to him through the Force, mapping the coiled tension of his body and the tendrils of hopefulness twining out of him, like the first tiny flowers of springtime.

The last step is the hardest. The mental barrier Rey has to push through to cross the final inch is almost more than she can manage. The _shouldn’t_ and _don’t_ and _forbidden_ are so strong they twist her stomach. She imagines a tribunal of Jedi judging and condemning her. _To hell with them_ , she decides, and falls against Ben’s chest.

The relief is shocking. She’s lightheaded, buffeted by the eruption of his emotions as his arms enfold her. It’s hard to breathe but she doesn’t want him to let go. His scent is rich and heady, somehow so much more alive than she would have guessed, imaging him as she does in the sterile blankness of his battle ships.

His heart thrums violently. She can feel it straining toward her through all the layers of blackness that encase him. The heavy cloak blocks out the wind. Ben is not cold; they are all wrong about that. He is heat and want and need just like her.

“Just a few minutes,” Rey breathes against his collar. She isn’t sure if she is asking the universe, or him, for grace. Possibly she is reassuring herself that she hasn’t betrayed all her principles.

“Rey,” he rasps her name on a heavy exhale, and she shivers to think that so much longing can fit inside such a small word. He buries his nose in her hair and pulls her in even tighter, as though he can fuse them together through only his will. She knows he will give her whatever she asks. Whether he will let her go is less certain. Maybe she doesn’t care about that, either.

Ben never speaks much. The more Rey has pieced together about his past, the more she has come to understand why he keeps his own counsel, trusts no one with himself. He has had no reason to trust; no one has ever been generous with Ben before Rey.

He can’t hide his thoughts from her now, but neither does he seem inclined to try. Theirs minds intertwine as easily as limbs, answers forming almost before questions are asked.

_You wanted to stay, I felt it. Tell me you wanted—_

_I couldn’t, you know that I—_

_Why did you leave? All I wanted was for you—_

_You left me, too. I begged you—_

_I would never—_

_You told me to let go, but you couldn’t—_

He lifts his hands to her face, tracing his lips along the line of her hair. She reaches for his arm, and for an instant he looks afraid. Are their minutes up? Will she push him away again? But Rey only tugs the heavy leather glove from his fingers, folding her cheek into his palm with a sigh. When she looks at him, her eyes are glassy with tears.

They are trapped, both of them. Ben can no more walk away from being Supreme Leader of the galaxy than she can turn her back on the Resistance, or toss aside the mantle of the Jedi. It doesn’t matter that neither of them are suited for the roles they’ve found themselves in. It doesn’t matter that each of them, in their own way, hates what they’ve become. There is nothing for it but to keep pushing forward. A tear slides down her cheek even as she smiles at him. _At least we have this._

“Sit with me?” she asks. He nods, bringing her hands to his mouth and kissing each in turn. She leads him to a far corner, away from the piercing wind. He sits first, pulling her down to wrap his arms and cloak around them both, a cocoon against the outside world. She rests in the silk of his dark hair.

“Close your eyes,” she whispers against his cheek. She feels the flutter of his eyelashes as he obeys. She opens her memory to him, showing him her vision from the night they first touched. His handsome face, so open and filled with tenderness. Twin sabers of blue moving in perfect unison. Their lips pressed together. Ben responds with his own vision: Rey, a whirlwind of feral beauty, safeguarding his back to take down a host of their enemies. Rey, powerful and magnificent, sharing his burdens, forever at his side. Rey in his bed in the dark of night, taming his demons and keeping his nightmares at bay.

There is a part of her that wants the life Ben is trying to share. She wants to stop being afraid. She wants to claim all of herself, even the parts that are wildly imperfect and frightening. Luke Skywalker chastised her once for not trying to stop herself when the Force offered her something she needed. It made no sense to her then and it doesn’t now, as she holds his nephew. She has always known that Ben needs her light; she is coming to understand how much she needs his darkness.

“Rey,” he groans, but they both feel the shift. Other members of the Resistance have followed her and are closing in. Time is not on their side.

“I’m sorry—” she begins, but Ben captures her mouth and with it, the end of the thought. Her mind is blissfully blank. There are only his lips, warm and soft, made to fit hers. The Force electrifies around them, humming and sparking with the rightness of it. She will never believe in any religion that tells her this is wrong.

“I have to go,” she says quietly. “And so do you.”

Even as she says it, she can’t bear to stop touching him. She already misses him. At the same time, she feels calm. Seeing him has settled a question she hasn’t been aware she’s been asking herself. She doesn’t know how to be a Jedi, doesn’t know how best to help the Resistance or end the war. She doesn’t know how she and Ben can possibly move forward together. But she knows how she feels about him, and she will not deny it or turn away from it again. If all they have are small moments of peace in the midst of chaos, that will still be more happiness than she has known before.


End file.
